For those of you who live in the USA, regardless of who you vote(d) for, you have to admit that the current electoral college system is somewhat unfair and unbalanced, and popular vote would have its own problems, some worse. Candidates spend all of their time campaigning in Ohio, Florida, and Virginia, among others. Also, Texas and California are just loads of free points for the Republicans and Democrats, respectively. This is my idea, tell me what you think:

There are two separate electoral colleges in my idea:
Electoral State College - Basically the same as the current college, based off of population of state. It is not based off of the current winner-take-all type of thing that exists today, except Nebraska.
Electoral Common College - Each state gets 3 electoral votes in this college, representing democratic, republican, and other. This college would not be winner-take-all either, and the third vote, if there is no independent candidate popular enough, would be more or less a tie breaker. In some states, a single candidate might get 2 or 3 votes.

After all votes are tallied, the electoral colleges vote like normal in their college. Then, the amount of votes a candidate earned in a college will be figured into a percentage, rounded to the nearest integer value. Their percentage in Electoral State College and Electoral Common College would then be averaged, and their final score (out of 100, of course) would be found, rounded as far as it takes to have a winner, if possible. The highest score is our next Commander in Chief.

Good idea?

That sounds a lot like the current system, where electoral votes are apportioned by population (one for every seat the state has in the House of Representatives), plus two more for each state (representing seats in the Senate). I'm not clear on how your system's votes would be decided in relation to the popular vote, but it seems like the only differences between it and the current system are that EC votes in a state are always proportional. The averaging probably has some impact as well, but how the electors' votes are chosen would impact that.

As long as we're wishing for a different electoral system I would just go for a direct national popular vote runoff system, or at least a National Popular Vote Compact in conjunction with a runoff.

As long as we're wishing for a different electoral system I would just go for a direct national popular vote runoff system, or at least a National Popular Vote Compact in conjunction with a runoff.

Schulze method specifically. However, honestly what would help more is a proportional representation system per state for the house of representatives keeping the senate the same. I'm sure people have done a lot of analysis on this system and it's outcomes already though.

The problem with a national popular vote is the reason they were trying to fix with the electoral college. Smaller states (like montana for example) would have their votes totally overshadowed by more populated places in a popular vote. In the current system, they still have very few votes, but the Senate votes add a good amount of worth.

I think the larger problem with the electoral college is at the state level, as states decide how their votes are split. In most states it's a winner take all proposition. Congressional districts with overwhelming support for one candidate may have to give their electoral vote to a candidate they don't support because he is more popular state wide. Unfortunately to fix it you'd have to pass legislation in every state (not impossible, but much more difficult).

What I would do is keep the electoral college and just have district's grant votes based off their popular vote, then the state representatives go with the popular vote of the state. I'd also seriously consider adding a 3rd senator to each state (or make senate electoral college votes worth more so as to not add to the clusterfuck that is the US congress). Population has gone way up since the system was invented, so smaller population states should get a little more representation in the college imo.

The national popular vote is only a "problem" because it treats voters as direct members of a unified nation rather than members of federated regions. The system as it is treats Montana as similarly important to California, but at the expense of giving a Montanan's vote more heft than a Californian's.

Some people find the federation argument a persuasive one for supporting an electoral college type system (I do not). I don't know that tweaks to such a system will fix its problems, because those problems will always involve a tradeoff between paroty in state influence in politics versus individual citizen influence. Small changes just shift where those tradeoffs fall.

Low-popuulation states are already somewhat overrepresented legislatively and electorally, I don't think that we should exacerbate that byy adding more senators.